Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education presents international accounts of approaches to educating mobile communities such as circus and fairground people, herders, hunters, Roma and Travellers. The chapters focus on three key dimensions of educational change: the client group moving from school to school; those schools having their demographics changed and seeking to change the mobile learners; and these learners contributing to fundamental change to the nature of schooling.
The book brings together decades of research into the challenges and opportunities presented by mobile learners interacting with educational systems predicated on fixed residence. It identifies several obstacles to those learners receiving an equitable education, including negative stereotypes and centuries-old prejudice. Yet the book also explores a number of educational innovations that bring mobility and schooling together, ranging from specialised literacy programs and distance and online education to mobile schools and specially trained teachers. These innovations allow us to think differently about how education can and should be, for mobile and non-mobile learners alike.
Table of Contents:
Foreword: Migrant Education as World Model. Jean-Pierre Liégeois. Preface. William Binchy. Acknowledgments. Editorial Introduction: Three Dimensions of Changing Schools. Máirín Kenny and Patrick Alan Danaher 1. Moving Lives: A Reflective Account of a Three Generation Travelling Attractionist Family in Italy Francesca Gobbo 2. Inclusive Education for Children and Young People with Interrupted Learning in Scotland Pauline Padfield and Gillian Cameron 3. Itinerant Farm Workers’ Children in Australia: Learning from the Experiences of One Family Robyn Henderson 4. Cultural Difference or Subversion in England: A Question of Perspective Martin Levinson 5. Promoting Educational Access for the Indigenous Reindeer Herders, Fisherpeople and Hunters in the Nomadic Schools of Yakutia, Russian Federation Vassily A. Robbek, Feodisia V. Gabysheva, Rozalia S. Nikitina and Natalia V. Sitnikova 6. Australian Romani Wendy Morrow 7. The Telesis of Nigerian Nomadic Education Abdurrahman Umar and Gidado Tahir 8. Irish Travellers, Identity and the Education System Máirín Kenny and Alice Binchy 9. The Revitalisation of a Threatened Indigenous Language: The Case of the Sami People in Norway Kamil Özerk 10. Paradoxes in Policy: Mixed Messages for Fairground and Gypsy Traveller Families in England Cathy Kiddle 11. Australian Circus People Beverley Moriarty 12. Against the Odds: Roma Population Schooling in Spain Manuel Souto Otero 13. Schooling and the Rabaris of Kachchh in India: The Need for Change Caroline Dyer 14. Inclusion Versus Specialisation: Issues in Transforming the Education of Australian Show Children Geoff Danaher and Patrick Alan Danaher. Conclusion: Whither Changing Schools? Judith Remy Leder. Respondent’s Text Judith A. Gouwens
About the Author :
Patrick Alan Danaher is Associate Professor (Education Research) in the Faculty of Education, and Scholarship of Learning and Teaching Program Leader in the Centre for Research in Transformative Pedagogies, at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland University, Australia.
Máirín Kenny was Headmistress until 1998 of a primary school for Traveller children. She now works as a research consultant, and has written and lectured extensively on intercultural school provision and on Travellers’ ethnic identity.
Judith Remy Leder is a writing consultant and retired Director of the California State University, Fullerton, Business Writing Program.
Review :
"Changing Schools addresses an important matter for teachers, principals and policymakers: the teaching of children who need to change schools frequently due to the lifestyle of their families. This is a fascinating book that will help those who teach, or prepare teachers to teach, travelling children. Furthermore, it will broaden every teacher’s mind and set them thinking about the diversity of circumstances that are available to their profession." -- Professor Terry Evans, Associate Dean (research) Faculty of Education, Deakin University
"This book will interest educationists no doubt, but more than that it would also open up a new avenue in migration research to unravel a hitherto little known marginalized group of migrants." -- Binod Khadria, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, and author of The Migration of Knowledge Workers (1999)
"Open education philosophy has much to learn from the real life experiences carefully analyzed in this book. Needless to say that it is a must need for those involved in framing flexible curricula and [those who] advocate [a] constructivist approach to democratization, openers and innovation in education." -- P.R. Ramanujam, Indian Journal of Open Learning (May 2009), Vol. 18, No. 2: 106-107
